From the Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium, hosted by Emory University. Why is close reading best understood as a conversation? What are its evaluative standards? How does it extend the conversation beyond literary studies?

Cast (in order of appearance): Johanna Winant, Matt Seybold, Farah Bakaari, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Dan Sinykin, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, Oren Izenberg, Beci Carver, Brian Glavey, Miranda Hickman, Patrick Sui, Jeff Dolven, Katie Kadue, Omari Weekes, Lisa Lee, Daniel Reynolds, Julie Orlemanski, Joshua Kotin

Date Recorded: November 7, 2025

Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby

Episode Webpage: TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/Collarbone

The first of three episodes based on the "Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium" hosted by Emory University. The symposium's opening address is followed by short provocations on "Freedom," "The Best," "Language," and "Difficulty," after which a there is a lengthy Q&A.

Cast (in order of appearance): Dan Sinykin, Matt Seybold, Johanna Winant, Beci Carver, Joshua Kotin, Julie Orlemanski, Omari Weekes, Anthony Cuda, John Lysaker, Dez Miller, Jeff Dolven, Oren Izenberg, Benjamin Reiss, Miranda Hickman, Emma Davenport, Farah Bakaari

Date Recorded: November 7, 2025

Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby

Episode Webpage: TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/RedWheelbarrow

Hosted by the University of Illinois-Chicago United Faculty, a roundtable discussion about confronting the challenges facing higher education labor organizing. Topics included education technology, faculty autonomy, power mapping, board composition, lobbying state legislators, artificial intelligence, surveillance and data-mining, Ponzi austerity, and more.

Cast (in order of appearance): Jeff Kessler, Matt Seybold, Anna Kornbluh, Dominique Baker, Peter Coviello, Nassar Mufti, Jeff Edwards

Date Recorded: December 4, 2025

Music: Danny Weiss Quartet

The event launching the 2025 Quarry Farm Symposium on Energy Studies begins with opening address by co-organizer Jeffrey Insko, then discussion of the theory of Everyday Ecofascism with collaborators from University of Connecticut [8:00}, then questions from the live audience of Energy Humanities scholars [50:00].

Cast (in order of appearance): Jeffrey Insko, Matt Seybold, Alexander Menrisky, April Anson, Caroline Levine, Brent Bellamy, Thomas S. Davis

Date Recorded: October 10, 2025

Music: Redd Holt & The Heptet

For more about this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/EverydayEcofascism

A spirited discussion of the state of higher education, the history of criticism, and the future of literary knowledge production, recorded with a live audience at University of Pennsylvania's English Faculty Lounge as part of the annual Penn English Department Lecture, delivered this year by Christopher Newfield.

Cast (in order of appearance): James English, Christopher Newfield, Matt Seybold, Whitney Trettien, Jenny, Zachary Lesser, Mark Algee Hewitt, Kerry McAuliffe, Eilis Lombard, Laura McGrath, Qing (Ruby) Liao

Date Recorded: October 22, 2025

Music: Redd Holt & The Heptet

Sound Engineering: Brian J. Kirk

For more about this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/Penn25

A chance to reflect, with journalism professor Jeff Sharlet, on his book, "The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War," the looming threat of acceleration, the methods and media of lingering, documentary modernism, and monsters within.

For a bibliography of this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/Lingering

The finale of "A Tale of Today," the eleventh season of "The American Vandal."

Matt Seybold offers his journey of curiosity from the end of "Criticism LTD" to "The Technofeudal Text."

Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff

Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective

Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio

For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/CruelFuturism

Remastered audio of Fredric Jameson's second lecture at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group and hosted by St. Cloud State University.

For further context, consider listening to "The Jameson Tapes" episodes which precedes this episode in The American Vandal Podcast feed, as well as the first lecture in the series, "Models of Ideological Analysis."

For a bibliography, please visit or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com

The second episode contextualizing Fredric Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society begins with a discussion of Jameson's controversial efforts to resuscitate György Lukács. From this begins a conversation about moment of high theory into which the Institute was inaugurated and the connection of that moment to the more recent method wars [24:00] , the specter of Foucault in Jameson's work [54:00], and how Jameson's models of ideological analysis intersect with his narrative theory and its centrality to Marxist practice [64:00].

Cast (in order of appearance): Caleb Smith, Anna Kornbluh, Matt Seybold, Fredric Jameson, Isabel Bartholomew, Robert Tally

Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective

For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Remastered audio of Fredric Jamesons opening lecture at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group and hosted by St. Cloud State University. For further context, consider listening to "The Jameson Tapes, Side A" which precedes this episode in The American Vandal Podcast feed.

For a bibliography, please visit or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com